About Me

I was born in march 1968 in a small village in Hertfordshire, just north of London. My father
was English (English father Irish mother) and my mother is Welsh.
When I was 2 months old the family moved to the Lebanon. I had some very good times there.
We left due to the war in a convoy that was miles long and travelled by road from Beirut to
Damascus in an 8 hour journey on the 4th of July 1976.
Since then i have lived in Croydon then various parts of Mid Sussex where I now live.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Labour to support Marriage in the tax system?

Andy Burnham, Labour's Chief Secretary to the Treasury is flying a kite in today's Telegraph. He has given an interview saying that marriage will be supported in the tax system. It is hard to believe that Gordon Brown was not aware of this development before it happened, though a report in the BBC adds the caveat that these are Andy's personal views. Perhaps this is just kite flying by Labour?

The funny thing is that so many Labour ministers have some out against Conservative proposals in the same area, and refused to say that marriage is a better structure for children. At the Labour party conference Gordon Brown even said:

"I say to the children of two-parent families, one-parent families, foster parent families; to the widow bringing up children: I stand for a Britain that supports as first-class citizens not just some children and some families but supports all children and all families," he said.

"We all remember that biblical saying: 'suffer the little children to come unto me'. No Bible I have ever read says: 'bring just some of the children'."

Can they really pull this off as a U turn? If they try I can imagine David Cameron quoting back the bible about heaven rejoicing when a sinner repents!

It seems that Labour are so bereft of there own ideas that they have to use ours wholesale. One panelist on last nights News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 said that Labour should be forced to give its pre budget report before the Conservative party conference whilst another suggested they should pu it in a sealed envelope instead.

6 comments:

How cynical and brazen can they get? Whilst it shows beyond any doubt that they have run out of ideas completely I still think we need to watch them on this. They have a tendency to say something like this, make a sop to it for the headlines and actually the fundamental policy is in a completely different direction. This has nothing to do with a damscene conversion and everything to do with neutralising a perceived negative.

James, yes I agree., a bit like the combined border force not including the police, and just papering over the problems, and the IHT plans just doing automatically something people were doing already. However, it makes it much harder for them to argue against us. Besides which the IHT plans explicitly recognised marriage in the tax system.

Labour need to show their vision again, instead of worrying about Cameron. There's a reason why they won the last 3 elections - people want a fairer country. Giving more money to single parents, e.g. those who can't work the hour's they like because they have children, school runs etc is exactly what a labour government should be doing. Bribing people to get married is immoral.Surely benefits should be based on combined household income, rather than marital status? There's an argument that marriage is good for society, but a quick bribe won't fix that - people aren't going to "not split up" because of a few quid, after all they could always remarry and get the benefits back.So yes you've guess I am a Labour supporter at the moment, and a pretty p*ssed off one at that, because we seem to be running scared and trying to match Tory tax cuts, which most people, I believe, don't want.